Maxis has officially announced that the update to babies in the game will be coming to The Sims 4 on March 14th, 2023. To give players an idea of how this feature was born and how it progressed into what it is today, Gurus went through and explained different phases.
We have put together a transcription for the video, but you can start watch the segment by clicking this link here to watch at the start of the babies segment.
From the very first days of this project the objective the team rallied around was to surpass player expectations for freeing the babies. Our vision to accomplish that was to add infants as an entirely new age, resulting in a much more natural progression for Sims’ early stages of life. When you add a new life stage to The Sims, there are a lot of challenges. We had to figure out how to display the infant since they’re too young to stand on their own.
We tried a lot of ideas. Some were great, some didn’t work so great, and a few were just plain creepy. We created a lot of new technologies, so now in the game when holding an infant, you’re able to sit down while still holding them, you can also talk to them, nurse them, and you can even give your infants to another Sim.
Since infants are just starting to develop their motor skills and figure out how to move their limbs and wade around, you’ll see they tend to flop around overexaggerated and uncoordinated. A great example of this is how they transition from sitting to laying on their back. I got to animate the crawl up and down of this step. I really wanted the players to see that that process of their infant years since they move with such a singular focus. So they will take a moment to notice the step, and then they start to break it down one tiny movement at a time until they overcome this obstacle. It was challenging but super cute.
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When creating the voice for the infant Sim, we had the unique challenge of finding a voice that was realistic, but one that was still cute when making distressing vocalizations like crying or whining. The cute checkbox was definitely checked. The infant has to be able to be fully customizable from head to toe. We added new various infant clothing, shoes, hair, hats, accessories, glasses, teeth, and birth marks.
One area that we leaned into was adding more ways to socialize and play between children, toddlers, infants, newborns and of course, pets. We want all of our Sims to share in the fun of these adorable infants when they arrive in game. We wanted to check off all those fun activities you can do with infants and create your own hilarious and adorable moments.
